Aston Martin V12 Zagato endurance racer concept debuts

Aston Martin’s newest collaboration with Zagato, the V12 Zagato endurance racer concept, was unveiled over the weekend at the Villa D’Este Concours in Lake Como, Italy, primarily as a basis to gauge customer interest, with a view towards a strictly limited run of road-going V12 Zagatos to come about.

The company’s V12 Vantage model provides the basis for the V12 Zagato, but the new two-door, two-seat coupe is very much its own entity design-wise, as should be the case. The new handcrafted aluminium body is shaped in such a manner that’s not possible using pre-formed panel techniques, AM says – utilising the skill of nearly 100 years of heritage in the craft, every aluminium panel on the car has been formed using an English wheel and traditionally-crafted body bucks.

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For example, each front wing comprises seven separate pieces of aluminium, combined and then hand finished to give one flowing form. Another iconic Zagato design cue is the double bubble roof, created in this case from five separate pieces, illustrating further the intensity of craftsmanship involved in the construction of the car.

Like the first DB4GT Zagato, which was shown to the public in late 1960 and which spent much of its life as a racing car after being launched, the new car is set to walk the same path – the first two V12 Zagatos to be created are set to serve as endurance race cars.

The car will make its racing debut in the 53. ADAC ACAS H&R-Cup VLN round at Nürburgring next week, with a view to two cars racing in the 24 hour race on June 25-26.

Anthony Lim believes that nothing is better than a good smoke and a car with character, with good handling aspects being top of the prize heap. Having spent more than a decade and a half with an English tabloid daily never being able to grasp the meaning of brevity or being succinct, he wags his tail furiously at the idea of waffling - in greater detail - about cars and all their intrinsic peculiarities here.

Wow, this reminds me of the Toyota-Subaru FT-86. Which made me think… I wonder if Aston Martin could build a future car using that platform, since it already has a badge engineering relationship with Toyota with the Aston Martin Cygnet based on the Toyota iQ.

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